GILL ROCCA
what feels right. “I suppose I need
to be able to go there. And when I
feel like I get to the point where it is
somewhere I can go, I then need to go
there for a while to work out what else
I need to be there.”
Often that extra something will be
a more tangible element, such as the
outline of a tree or a few distant
lights, something that will help to
articulate the space without spelling
it out obviously. “The light in my
painting has always been the humanelement almost,” she says.
“Suddenly when you put the car
lights in there’s a whole new narrative
to the work. There’s never anyone in
my paintings apart from those distant
lights. They’re very solitary, very
empty in that sense.”
Gill certainly has a strong affi nity
with the landscape for a painter living
in one of the world’s busiest cities.
She grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire
on the edge of the moors, a
landscape she says that “will neverleave me”, while family trips to the
Lake District were a regular feature
of her childhood too. Today she owns
a cabin in the Surrey Hills, yet none
of these real landscapes will fi gure
in her paintings.
“I want them to be anonymous.
And I want them to be sort of vague
enough that people do think that it’s a
place they think they know, or they’ve
been to, or they’re familiar with. When
I can see that they’ve connected one
of my paintings to somewhere that’sABOVEFigment XLV,
oil on birch plywood,
20cm diameter
OPPOSITE PAGE,
FROM TOP
Somewhere III, oil
on wood, 20x30cm;
Miniature LVIX,
oil on cast resin,
- 5 x7. 5 c m